RE: Opnqryf with Many Selections

[Buck Calabro <buck.calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Jackson wrote:

>Why is writing a CL program messy?
>
>if (&fld1 *ne ' ') do
>chgvar &qryslt ('fld1 = ')
>chgvar &qryslt (&qryslt || &q || &fld1 || &q)
>enddo
>
>and so forth.
>
>If the search arguments might contain a 
>generic character, detect the % or *
>with a tiny RPG program and verify the 
>argument syntax or detect with the
>program and validate syntax using 
>QCACHECK as you suggested.
>
>I just wrote 40 percent of the basic program 
>in 5 minutes.  I don't understand why you 
>think this will get ugly.

It'll be fun to watch the little tweaks that will get made to this bad boy
before it's a working program instead of a skeleton.  :-) The devil is
(always) in the details.  We'll need to add checking for blank parms (users
field exit through instead of using newline), discriminating between
character and numeric fields in the database (the old quote deal), search
fields containing apostrophe's.  Not to mention that next week we'll have to
add "or" logic.  :-)

The main reason CL is ugly compared to an HLL is the lack of subroutines.  A
few subroutines/procedures would make coding the solution much cleaner, I
think.  I'm not knocking CL - you can use OPNQRYF to do a CHAIN in CL if you
want, but it's ugly compared to the HLL version.

Unfortunately, it seems that many AS/400 people aren't that comfortable with
CL.  When suggesting a solution I'm torn between recommending more familiar
RPG or less familiar CL.  Personally I would work this one in ReXX, but even
fewer people use that than CL...

Buck Calabro
Aptis; Albany, NY
"We are what we repeatedly do.
 Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." --Aristotle


Billing Concepts Corp., a NASDAQ Listed Company, Symbol: BILL
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